


Saving Mr. Rodgers

by sinisterkid92



Category: Castle
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-02-27 11:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2691932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate Beckett is investigating a homicide when she reveals the plot to assassinate billionaire Richard Rodgers. After meeting her Richard demands that she'll be the one leading the team of his body guards, and she is persuaded to accept. What follows is undeniable forces of attraction - and the investigation of who wants Richard dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lakes

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to make a disclaimer to this story that my knowledge of finance is very shallow, embarrassingly shallow, and what I do know is… well let’s just say that I’m studying humanitarian subjects at university, meaning that economy is treated more as a social construct and a way to describe the world, rather than “this is how it works”. I got this idea reading about the “Davos Man”, and thought it would be an interesting subject to explore. 
> 
> The title is a play on “Saving Mr Banks”, but I have not seen the movie nor do I plan to. This story is not based on that movie, nor the premise of it.

**Monday August 24th, 2009 – The Lakes**

It was the sirens that woke Kathrine Beckett. Despite having lived in New York her whole life her sleep was light, easily jousted out of deep sleep. Prying one eye open she saw one of her favorite books on the bed next to her, face down marking the page she had gotten to before the fight against sleep had proven to be a futile battle. The taste of cotton in her mouth, and the gray light in the room, was all information she needed to know what type of day it would be.

The clock on her bedside table glared the red numbers 5.28. Groaning in discontent she hid her face in her pillow, knowing that in only two minutes the alarm clock would go off. If a dead body didn't appear before then.

Turning the alarm off she dragged herself out of bed, pulling off her sleep shirt as she went. Since her last failure of a relationship a few months back– she would deny a pattern, but once the one year anniversary came along she had ended it, like always – she had started to question the whole idea of propriety. Certain that things needed to be changed she had chopped off a good part of her hair, and had relished in the ease of it. 5 am showers had turned into 5.30 am showers, for one. Her one friend Lanie had been the only one to mourn the loss of the long locks of hair.

The knobs in shower had settings of frigid, warm, and scalding. The exact twist of them was a skill she was proud of, one which had, when she was in a relationship, resulted in that none of her companions could shower on their one. Unless they sought a cold shower, or enjoyed being scalded alive. Massaging her shoulders she tried to relax, but thoughts of the day ahead intruded. Being the youngest female homicide detective in the precinct, even the force, had been a dream of hers for a long time. The relentless pursuit of this position had marked the good part of her twenties, and now that she was only a few months shy of her thirtieth birthday, she still felt as if she missed something

Through Facebook she had learned that most of her friends were married, had partners, a good portion of them had kids, expecting kids, or at the very least had pets. She avoided the site most of the time, only when she had forgotten the infestation of gullibility on it did she venture back, dose herself with a strange sort of envy of their lives, and at the same time pity. It was impossible to empathize, her life was far from what they had.

It was not that which was missing, children that is, it was the abruptness of how her mother's life had ended, and how meaningless it had been. Her days were spent finding other people's killers, one day hoping that her mother's killer would appear. That one day she and her father would get the closure they needed.

After drying herself, she dressed in the clothes she had bought months earlier when she had been promoted. It were clothes that reminded people of her profession and superiority first, gender second. The importance to be a police officer first was one that was life, and career, saving.

It was during breakfast, ham on toast and a big mug of black coffee, that her phone started ringing. Earlier than she had hoped, but it was not unexpected. After she had been informed of the address where she would begin her work day she stuffed the last of the toast in her mouth, and poured the rest of the coffee in a travel mug, one she had invested in after realizing the hole bought coffee made in her budget.

In her line of work she had seen many dead bodies, most ended up dead because of domestic arguments, some from gang violence, random street violence; there were all types of deaths. For the most part they ended up like the victim now, lying on the floor of an apartment in a pool of blood, the chaos surrounding bearing witness to an intense struggle. Some went silently, accepting their faith, others fought until the very end

Kate had wondered quite a few times who she would be, if the time came. She had faced the other end of a gun many times, but she had never been convinced they would actually pull the trigger on her. This man had fought for his life, the smashed glass table, overturned chairs, haphazardly strewn papers witnessed of a struggle, and a desire to live. 

“He was shot at close range,” Lanie informed her when heard Kate’s footsteps approaching, squinting at the wound in the middle of his brow.

“Can you tell what type of gun that was used?” Kate asked, her eyes shifting from Lanie to the body. There was something that didn’t seem right, something that was missing, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“No, I will have to get back to you on that, there is something peculiar about the wound and blood spatter… look here, it’s almost as if the vessels were cauterized by the bullet.” Kate realized then what it was that was missing; lots of blood. 

“What type of gun would do that?” she wondered out loud, and she squatted beside the body, trying to register all the details, catalogue them for later use. “Is there an exit wound?”

“No, and I hope that the bullet remained intact, and it looks that way considering the minimal blood spatter, because then I can extract it and see if I can find a match for it.” Lanie was writing on her clipboard as she spoke, Kate sensed that whatever she needed to know she would be informed of in the crime scene report, and the subsequent autopsy report. 

“Esposito, do we have a name of the victim?” she shot out, seeing the man in the corner of the room talking to one of the uniform men who had responded to the first call. 

“According to the ID in the victim’s wallet his name is Colin Lake, 28 years old,” he said, hands resting on his hips – he knew what he was doing, and that he was good at it, too. “Neighbors say Lake was a quiet neighbor, he worked nights and slept most of the day, the next door neighbor was the one who called in after hearing what sounded like a fight, didn’t hear a gunshot.” 

“Did they know where he worked?” she asked, once again looking around at the apartment that had been torn upside down in a struggle.

“No, but the neighbors son said he thinks Lake was a security guard.”

“Okay, thank you Espo,” she said. “I’m going to talk to the landlord and hear if there were any security cameras in the building that could’ve picked up the murderer.”

The talk with the landlord proved fruitless; while there were cameras in the building they had stopped working following a power outage months before, and had decided not to invest in the reparations required to get them working again. Instead she left the crime scene without much insight to the victim, more than his next of kin: a brother. Colin Lake’s parents had died in a car crash 5 years earlier, and the brother was the only one he had left in life.

Kate knew about loss. Losing her mother had made her all too familiar with grief, but she still had her father. For many years he, too, had been lost to her, when he found comfort at the bottom of a bottle and spent most of his time too out of it to remember why he got drunk in the first place, and that he still had a daughter 

It was her job to make the calls. There was no way to tell people that someone they loved had been murdered that would lessen the pain, the only thing she could do was minimize the additional pain. The brother was older than Colin, and Kate could hear children in the background when he picked up the phone. 

“Hello, I am Detective Kathrine Beckett calling from the New York Police Department, I’m looking for Ethan Lake,” she said. It was easy for her to say, it poured out of her mouth without thinking. Sometimes when she made private phone calls she had to stop herself from saying that sentence.

“This is him,” the man confirmed, a weariness had entered his voice. As Kate slowly explained to him what had happened, there was only minute changes in Ethan’s voice. Those were changes that Kate had learnt to pick up on; changes that either meant grief, indifference, or that they were in part, or fully, responsible for the death of the victim. In Ethan’s case, all she could hear was the realization that his family was gone.

The hardest part about being a detective was telling the family; the rest of it she loved. Solving the murders, bringing justice and closure was the reason she woke up in the mornings. If she couldn’t do this job, she didn’t know what she would do. Her whole adult life had been spent with this goal in mind, doing this. That’s how she got through those phone calls, those talks with the families; because at the end of the day she brought justice for them.

What followed was a day of questions. Despite being relatively new to the job – definitely the newest at the precinct, she had understood a routine in a homicide investigation, and that was that the first day usually always was one for questions. Colin Lake was a security guard at a company called Castles, a company that was owned by billionaire Richard Rodgers, and dealt with high risk, and highly profitable, hedge funds. 

Esposito and she decided to head to the offices that the company resided in. The office had pristine windows, and an open space plan in the reception area. It was a room too large, in Kate’s opinion, to house only a simple wooden reception with one smiling woman behind it. Both Esposito and she noticed the guards standing with stiff backs beside the two doors on opposite ends of the room, and two standing by the door they had just come through, and gave each other knowing glances. Their suspicions were even further piqued when showing their badges wasn’t enough to prove their status as cops, since the woman called to confirm that the badges were real, and that Kate and Esposito were supposed to be there. 

Granted one hour to interview Colin’s colleagues by the head of security, they intended to make the most of it. However, most of the people he had worked with had little to say, which they had been warned about by the head of security. A signed non-disclosure agreement left them with little room to talk. Most of them had only nice things to say. According to a beefy read-headed man Colin Lake had been a nice person, if only somewhat quiet and reserved. It was him that told them that even without the signed agreement there wasn’t much to say about his dead colleague anyway. 

When the hour was up the head of security met up with them to see them out. When he had made the call to let them in it had been over the phone with the receptionist, and Kate had a few prejudices against security detail, and had expected a brusque ex-military –esque person. The person who stood in the door was a man in his early thirties with floppy blond hair. Contrary to what Kate had imagined he was soft and kind. As he walked them out he introduced himself as Kevin Ryan, and apologized for the way things needed to be handled. As a gesture to show that they had nothing to hide, when it came to the murder, Ryan slipped them his card. 

They had left the offices without any more leads, just the nagging feeling that it didn’t seem as if Colin was the type of person who would be murdered like he had been. People who were murdered like that were people who were deep into something they couldn’t get out of. People’s whose activities before their death would tell a story.

Nothing showed up when they checked his financials. The only relationship that his brother could tell them about was an ex since several years back. All they had was one phone call Colin had made to his brother the day before he was murdered where he appeared to be a bit upset. According to his brother this was nothing unusual for this time of year; it was nearing the 5 year anniversary of their parent’s death. 

What they had was Colin’s work place, that seemed to deal with things far more sensitive than hedge funds – but Kate was unsure of how secretive that sort of business was. Were there trade secrets? Classified documents that revealed where investments would be most profitable? Was there, possibly, illegal activities within the company which caused it to be this profitable? What she knew about the financial world was basic, hedge funds bordered into a territory where she had to admit that her knowledge was lacking. Which made this that much harder to investigate.

The next couple of days was spent trying to find a reason find a reason to return to the office that Colin had worked at. Any billionaire was bound to have multiple lawyers whose only task was to keep the police out, meaning they needed solid proof to get a warrant. What they found was circumstantial, or irrelevant: a woman had filed a sexual harassment suit which had lead nowhere just the year before after leaving the company, and a person working in the mail room had sustained work-related injuries resulting in indefinite disability leave from the company. Nothing that could be tied to Colin, nor to anything that would get him killed.

By that point Kate had started to suspect that maybe the killer was after someone else, and killed the wrong person. I wouldn’t have been the first time. That was until four days after Colin was found that they received information from another precinct in New York that Colin’s brother Ethan had been murdered, too. With the same shot to his head. Neighbors heard nothing. The only difference was that only hours before Ethan had made a phone call to them, alerting them of a letter that Colin had sent him before he died. They got a copy of it before Ethan was murdered.

The letter yielded little information as to who the killer was, nor the reason they were murdered. What the letter contained was Colin’s worry that he was being followed, and that someone was after him. There was one line in it, though, which was the golden ticket into Castles; ever since I was promoted I’ve felt watched, I think this promotion was my death sentence.

Ryan met up with them in the lobby the second time they visited, and showed them up to his office on the third floor. It was a decent sized office, with video screens that covered most of the south wall of the office, and the eastern wall had small windows to minimize the reflections on the screens. 

“Please, sit down,” Ryan offered them, and she and Esposito complied. They were simple chairs for visitors who weren’t supposed to linger long. 

“Thank you, Mr Ryan, for taking the time to meet with us,” she said, careful about not leaning back in the chair. “As you must understand that now when we’re dealing with two murders this has become a much more delicate investigation, which we will need all help we can get to solve.” Diplomacy, she had learnt, was the best first approach when dealing with strung up and wealthy people. While Kevin Ryan most probably was a middle class man, the company he worked for required him to think as an upper-class man while on the job. 

“Of course, we’ll do what we can do help out.” Ryan’s smile was kind. There was no ring on his finger, or any photographs in his office, but Kate didn’t peg him as a bachelor. No, he had someone, at least. 

“We appreciate that.” Pleasantry was tedious, but necessary. “Mr Lake sent his brother a letter before he was murdered, and his brother Ethan Lake received it, and read it, only hours before his death. We managed to secure a copy of the letter before Ethan Lake was killed, but the original was stolen after the murder. We have some questions about the content of this letter.” 

“I will do my best to answer them, but I am only head of security, I have little insight into the business conducted in this building,” Ryan said, weighing back in his black leather office chair. 

“In this letter Mr Lake writes about a promotion, what type of promotion was this?” Ryan’s lips were clamped shut for a moment, hesitating to answer the question.

“He was promoted from front desk to security on the eight floor, the one Mr Rodger’s office is on,” he eventually said. “The details of what he did I can’t discuss.”

“We understand,” Esposito said, a contemplating look on his face. “When we searched Mr Colin’s apartment we didn’t find any type of key card, which I noticed you using on multiple occasions on our way up here, nor indication that this was his work place. How does that work?”

“Well, the simple explanation is that each employee has a key card which they can only have on them within this building, and one they leave at the end of the day. Mr Lake’s key card, somehow, disappeared the day before his murder, and we recognized a breach in our system before he was found. We have updated our key cards now, though,” Mr Ryan explained with reluctance. 

“Why didn’t you report this to the police, or tell us the first time we were here?” Kate asked, trying to lay a puzzle with half the pieces missing. It didn’t add up. 

“We have a private contractor that we utilize for this type of thing, involving the police has a tendency to blow things out of proportion.” Esposito coughed to cover his reaction, and his amusement for what he knew was about to follow.

“Mr Ryan, two people are dead, I don’t think bad press should be your main concern.” The steel in her voice was hard to cover up, she did manage to cover the white hot anger that boiled in her chest. 

“Detective Beckett, I sympathize, but the reputation of this company is what keeps other companies, even countries, afloat, which means that bad press is more than a few lost investments.” She was met with equal amount of steel. 

“What type of breach did you discover?” she said, moving on.

“Nothing important, it was to a file cabinet which contains mostly copies of public information. Nothing had been stolen.” Ryan shrugged.

“I would like a list of files that were in that cabinet, if that is possible?” she asked, trying to resume to the pleasantries that had been there at the beginning of the conversation.

“Of course, I will have someone send them over to you.” Ryan began shuffling a couple of papers on his desk, to make a show of how busy he was. 

“Thank you.” Esposito said, looking over to the wall of screens. “We would also like the recording of the breach. You said cabinet, so it was not a breach into your security system, but an actual physical cabinet.”

“I… will get back to you on that,” Ryan said, looking a bit nervous.

“We would hate to have to get the courts involved with a warrant,” Esposito said, a fake smile in place.

“Right, as I said I will get back to you on that.”

It was only three hours later when they received the digital copies of the inventory of the filing cabinet, and the security tape footage. Handing it over the footage to the IT-specialists Esposito and Kate divided up the inventory, and started to sort through the files. Most of them made little sense to a person without economic literacy, the course she took in college helped a little, but it still left some lacking. It also left them with a hanging question: everything in this inventory was, as Kevin Ryan had informed them, public knowledge that could be found on Castles website. 

The only lead they had left was the security footage from the break in after Colin Lake had been murdered. It took a few hours for the tech department to get a clear enough picture of the suspect. They’d been called to view the footage with the tech, to get all the information they needed about the recorded footage.

According to the tech the video was clean, there had been no tampering with the footage. The suspect was around 6’3, and spent approximately 7 minutes in the room which the cabinet was in before leaving seemingly empty handed. He wore the uniform security guards in the building wore, which meant that they would have to make a phone call to Kevin Ryan to hear if they could identify the man on the video. Ryan informed them that he did not know who was on tape, but suspected that the suspect wore Colin Lake’s uniform, as they appeared to be the same size. 

Seven days after Colin had been murdered, and three days after Ethan had been killed, Kate worried that the trail was starting to grow cold. Murder investigations generally yielded a suspect quickly, or not at all. 

After spending most of her Monday morning looking over the tape, over and over, she decided to pay a visit to Castles, again. Esposito had the day off after working the whole weekend, meaning she was on her own for the day. By the time she reached the front desk the woman behind smiled, and informed her that Mr Ryan was already on his way down to meet her.

“Detective Beckett, what can I do for you today?” Ryan’s face wore a genuine smile. “Come on up, we’ll talk in my office.”

“I’m here about the breach,” she said as they walked into the elevator. Long legs made her able to keep a high pace with men, something she had discovered was an advantage when establishing her authority with men. 

“I appreciate your eagerness detective, I would prefer that you wait to ask questions until we’re in my office,” he said. “How was your weekend?”

“Just work,” she answered honestly, looking at her reflection in the stainless steel of the doors. She shifted uncomfortably. Being questioned of her free time always made her uncomfortable, namely because she did not have a social life to speak of at all. 

“Wow, I didn’t know just how hard detectives worked.” They stepped out of the elevator, and Ryan swiped his keycard at the first door, letting her in in front of him. “I was in the police academy before I got this job, was just a few weeks from finishing when I got a job here… the pay is a lot better.”

“How long have you worked here?” Walking through a few more doors they got to Ryan’s office, where he punched in a code to open it. 

“Ah, since 2001, so about 8 years, I started as a security guard, though, and worked my way up. Please, sit.” They sat opposite each other, on different sides of his desk. “What has brought you back here?”

“I have a few questions about the cabinet that you discovered a breach in, as you said there was no information in it that could not be accessed online or via public record, which makes it a strange cabinet for a person to break into, did you rearrange the storing recently?” she asked, trying to read Ryan’s expression, but found no reaction at all to her queries.

“No, we have not,” he said. “The files are digital, what is inside that storage room is encrypted back-up disks, which have not been tampered with.”

“Were there other files stored in there which contains information that others could want?” She received a deadpan expression as an answer.

“Detective Beckett, this business is run on speculation, it predicts where the capital will go, and when it will go, that is information that could make a lot of people very rich,” Ryan explained. “So the answer is yes.”

“Are you sure no other file has been tampered with, a minor file that doesn’t seem of importance,” she asked. The people she had interrogated in her life had taught her that she needed to be really clear about what she was asking, and to double check with them. People had a tendency to lie, skip over parts they didn’t think were necessary, and forget things, no matter how high up they were in the food chain.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“That’s strange.” She furrowed her eyebrows and thought it over once more. “Is it possible that I can see this room?”

“Uh.” Ryan turned to the computer on his desk, and clicked on a few things before turning back to her. “Yes, that should work.”

“Where is this cabinet exactly?” she asked, following him out of the office and down the corridor towards the elevator. 

“On the 8th floor,” he said. 

“That’s on the same floor as Mr Rodgers’ office?”

“That’s correct,” Ryan said, looking amused at the inquiries, as if there was an inside joke she wasn’t privy to. 

“That’s a bit odd, I’d have guessed the files were in the basement.” She shared his amusement at the peculiar choice of location.

“If you ever have the chance to meet Mr Rodgers, you will understand.” It seemed to her as an odd way to speak of one’s boss, especially one as powerful as Richard Rodgers. Esposito had during a dry-up of ideas googled the man, and realized he could buy the whole New York police force if he wanted to. It was possible that he had at least a finger into it. 

She questioned Ryan about Mr Rodgers on their way up, but Ryan was a firm believer in that you need to meet a person to understand what they were like. The only thing he could say that Mr Rodgers was not like most people who were new to money, and that he still good friends with his childhood self. 

They reached the floor in no time, the speed of the elevator made her a bit queasy. Into the corridor where Castle’s office was there was no key card needed, there was however several security guards at seemingly random spots, and some appeared to be armed. Ryan greeted them all with a smile and a nod, and the guards replied back. From the way they smiled at each other it was easy to tell that Ryan was the sort of boss who lead with ease, and who the people under him could feel at ease with.

At the end of the corridor there were two double doors leading into what she suspected was Mr Rodger’s office, and Ryan confirmed it. Right next to it was the door to the filing cabinets, as they had called the digital files. 

“It looks dark in there,” she said, after noticing that there was light coming through the frosted windows.

“Mr Rodgers is out of town,” Ryan said with the tone of finality she had come to get used to, indicating she would get no more information of Mr Rodger’s whereabouts. 

They entered the room, and just as she imagined it was a simple room with processors that stored digital copies of files. Ryan punched in a code that disarmed the alarm system, and then leaned against the door frame as he watched over her.

“Had anything been moved after the breach?” she asked, turning around in the tight space that wasn’t occupied by processors.

“Nothing that we noticed anyway.” She looked at the shelves hanging on the walls where papers and office supplies were stored, and up higher towards the vent. 

“Have you checked the ventilation system?” She remembered that the man who had broken into this room had looked sweaty when he left.

“No, we haven’t,” Ryan admitted. 

“Okay, I’m going to go up there and check,” she said, climbing up on a desk that had been stored in the room, pushing away blank copy paper with her feet. She thanked that she was tall because she could just barely reach and look into the vent. “I think I see something in there... do you have a screwdriver, or something?” 

Ryan found one with the office supplies and handed it to her, and she opened up the vent to see what was inside.

“Mr. Ryan, what date did you say Mr Rodgers was returning to the office?” she asked, Ryan noticed that she was tense.

“I didn’t mention it,” he said, vaguely. He knew he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but sensed that now was not the time to stick strictly to protocol. “He’ll be back tomorrow morning.” Kate looked down at him with wide concerned eyes.

“There’s a bomb up here, and it’s set to go off tomorrow at 10 am.”


	2. Mr. Rodgers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After finding a bomb at Castles' offices Kathrine Beckett finally meets Richard Rodgers

Monday August 31st 2009 – Mr. Rodgers

The alarm blared at 7.30am, violently shaking Kate from her sleep. Exactly five hour hours earlier she had fallen into her bed, as graceful as a cow dancing ballet, and fallen asleep instantly. Had it not been for captain Motgomery’s words before she left Castles the day before, she would have slept well into the afternoon: “Mr. Rodgers wants you to come by tomorrow morning.” 

After finding the bomb they had evacuated the building in the wait for the bomb squad. Luckily the bomb had been a standard bomb which hadn’t taken too long to disarm. What followed that chaos was the subsequent search for more bombs in the building, and when the bomb squad had cleared the building, they opened it up to the NYPD. For the following hours they interviewed all personnel that could have come in contact with the suspect, anyone who had access to the floor, and called to schedule interviews with everyone who had visited the floor the past week. Alongside that there were sweeps made, the vent was tested for fingerprints, and the alarm system that should have given off a silent alarm when the vent was opened was sweep for bugs by techs. 

Not long after the search for other bombs was over with she was the one who made the first arrest. Kevin Ryan was taken into custody at 8.23pm. He swore that he was innocent, but the fact remained that under his supervision a bomb had been placed inside the building, and had managed to get past the security system at several check-points. Ryan had verifiable alibies for both murders, but he could’ve had a partner.

Following an unsuccessful interrogation of Ryan she returned to Castles, where she helped out with a few interviews before people headed home for the night. The late nights weren’t uncommon in this line of work, but after a week of early mornings, and then a night as this one, she was exhausted. The alarm couldn’t have been more unwelcome. 

The shower barely helped wake her up, and the extra black coffee tasted extra bitter, but didn’t bring much energy. On her way to Castles she stopped by a coffee shop and bought a grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla. If she was going to splurge she’d might as well do it proper. 

Ryan proclaimed his innocence, the hack of the system had been undetected, and it had been made during a shift where he was not on duty. To Ryan’s defense, the person who was on duty at the time was unaccounted for. He didn’t pick up when they called, he had been called in sick from work for a couple of days, and didn’t open the door when they knocked. What they needed was a warrant to search that man’s place. In the meantime they kept Ryan in custody. 

10 am she walked into the building where Castles’ offices vacated. She felt as if she was much better suited to be an extra in a zombie movie rather than a competent police officer. She greeted the woman behind the reception, whose name she had learnt yesterday was Jada Brown, and stepped into the elevator. Thankful that she was alone she inspected the dark circles under her eyes – the concealer had done a good job hiding the worst of it, and she mostly looked as if she had slept a little poorly, not as if she was about to turn into a zombie. After years of being a cop she had learnt the tricks on how to hide the tell-tale signs of sleep deprivation and stress under makeup, yet she still had to find a way to deal with it, healthily. She guessed there was no such thing.

Strangely, as she approached Mr. Rodgers’ office, she felt a bit nervous. No, nervous was not the right word for it. It was more like nails on a chalk board, and she was walking on nails – that was a more fitting description. Nerves wasn’t something Kate felt, she had always been stealthy. This was apprehension due to the fact that there was no telling of what kind of man Richard Rodgers was. Plots to murder people as influential as Mr. Rodgers tended to either be about politics, and people like Mr. Rodgers could be ruthless. A ruthless influential man could be deadly to those in his way. Kate Beckett didn’t want to stand in his way, and it was not her job to do so, yet if he believed she did, what did that mean to her?

Outside his office there were two stone faced body guards, ones she did not recognize, and made a point to get some time to talk to them later. They looked at her badge, and then at a list of authorized individuals that would be granted access to the office, before opening the door. The doors didn’t make a sound, but she could see from their thickness, and the sturdiness of the wood, that it was heavy. The inside of the office was well lit, with two large windows on one wall of the office. It wasn’t as big as she had imagined, but certainly larger than most offices were. There was a desk, on which a closed laptop sat on, along with various knickknacks and picture frames. There were toys on the table, which perplexed Kate. A high-up, ridiculously rich, man who had a display which looked juvenile in his office didn’t fit the profile.

There were bookcases that adorned two of the remaining walls, and on the third wall hung three large paintings. Close to the walls with the bookcases stood two couches with an elegant coffee table that matched the mahogany of the door, desk, and bookcases. On the couches sat a group of five men, and a single woman. One of the men was Montgomery, who stood up as she walked into the room.

“Mr. Rodgers, excuse me for interrupting, but I would like you to meet detective Beckett.” He gestured to a brown haired man, and then back to her. The man stood up, and she noted that he was tall. She was tall herself, and accentuated it with high heels, yet he was still taller than her. Attractive too, looked far less harmful than he probably was. 

“Nice to meet you, sir,” she said, and extended her hand out to greet him. There was no hesitation from him, he immediately stepped forward to take her hand, and a large smile spread across his face. 

“No, no nice to meet you, you saved my life!” His eyebrows shot up in his face, and he unconsciously pulled her closer to him with a pull of his hand. It was a nice, firm, handshake. “I’ve never experienced anything as exciting as this before!” He was still holding her hand, which he noticed then, and let it go quickly. “Most of the threats I get are about shuffling paper one way instead of the other, but this!” He paused, bit his lip as if he could barely contain his excitement. “This is different.”

“Glad to see that you’re taking this okay, sir,” she said, bemused at his unusual reaction to a plot to murder him. 

“Oh no, call me Rick,” he said with a wave of his hand. He leaned forward, with a hand covering part of his mouth, and said through his teeth: “My dad is sir.”

“Okay, Rick…” she said. 

“Now, I’ve got a seat for you right here detective.” He walked back to the couches, and pointed out a seat further down the couch he sat on, with one of the men between him. “I’d like you to meet my lawyers, and my personal assistant Francesca.” It was only when he said his personal assistant’s name that he smiled, the rest of them were granted just the curtesy of being introduced. 

“Nice to meet you.” They greeted her back in a chorus of mumbles. 

“We were discussing the case before you walked in, and what we know so far,” Montgomery said. She nodded her head, not feeling as if she had enough energy to contribute to the conversation. She was there on orders, otherwise she would have been enjoying a day off. Sleeping. 

“Yes, I was informed that you had Kevin Ryan in your custody,” Mr. Rodgers said. 

“That’s correct, he’s our main suspect at this point,” she said. 

“Too bad he didn’t do it.” The smile on Mr. Rodgers face was smug, and she wanted to wipe it off.

“Considering he’s the one who has responsibility over the security system, and didn’t report the breach to the police, and let several more breaches in your security system go by undetected, we have strong reasons to hold him as an accomplice to the conspiracy to kill you, Mr… Rick.” She swallowed the title, reluctantly saying his nickname instead. 

“He was with me at the time of the murder,” Mr. Rodgers still wore the smug smile. It annoyed her. She did not like people who tried to out-smart her, who thought they could do her job better than she could. 

“He could’ve had a partner.” It was hard to stop the eye roll at the absurdity of the injection. 

“Okay, let me say this… Kevin is the godfather to my daughter, we play video games together, every Thursday night. If he wanted to kill me I would know.”

“With all due respect, that doesn’t mean he’s innocent,” she said, pressing on. Her jaws were tight, it was growing harder for her not to bark back at him. Once glance at Montgomery though, and she calmed down slightly. Knowing she was in the same room as her captain meant that she had someone to keep her in check. 

“I’m just saying, you’ve got the wrong guy.” Mr. Rodgers held up his hand in faux surrender, the grin on his face not faltering even the slightest. Instead of replying she took a deep breath, and tried to get back to the conversation. 

“Okay, have you gotten anywhere on motive for the bombing?” she asked. 

“Well, Mr. Rodgers do receive quite a number of threats on a regular basis, mainly due to political impact, or investments he does into varying projects… and people who disagree with his wealth,” one of the lawyers said, his upper lip barely moving as he spoke. 

“Was there any threat in particular that popped out, anything that has happened recently that could be the motivation behind this?” The lawyers appeared to sigh in unison, and glared at Mr. Rodgers. 

“Mr. Rodgers bought up a production company in Thailand, a shoe factory, and instead of making it an affiliated company, which he had expressed intentions of during the negotiations, he decided to sell it for a loss to a local company,” the same lawyer said. 

“I don’t understand, how could this upset people to this extent?” Mr. Rodgers shifted in his seat on the couch, looking part guilty and shameful, and part absolutely gleeful and prideful of what he had done. 

“It upset stocks, and has potential to shift the balance of trade. In simple terms it could create a huge impact on western companies who rely on export.” The lawyer looked tired, about as tired as she felt. 

“Okay… have there been any threatening letters, or messages, about this?” When the lawyers gave each other long looks she decided that she preferred Mr. Rodgers over them. 

“They have agreed to hand over the letters and messages which concerns our investigation,” Montgomery clarified for her. They spent the next two hours going over what they had discovered during investigation, and Ryan’s alibi. Turned out that Ryan had been with Rodgers at the time of the murders, spending time with Rodgers’ daughter, and attending one of her dance recitals. It did appear that if Ryan was a part of the plot then he would have to be a callous person, which she didn’t peg him as. It did seem as if he was an unlikely suspect, but until they could clear him he was their only one. They would have to release him soon, though, due to no actual evidence that he was a part of the plot. 

By the end of the two hours there wasn’t much left to say about the current state of the investigation other than that they would follow the leads as they appeared. The lawyers poured out of the room first, as if they were relieved to have been able to suffer through this. Mr. Rodgers requested her to stay a while longer, which left her with the personal assistant once Montgomery headed back to the precinct to lead the investigation.

“Francesca, did you manage to clear my schedule for the morning?” he asked the woman.

“Yes I did, though Mr. Gromley wasn’t happy about it, and wanted to schedule a meeting tonight instead, at seven pm.” The woman shuffled through her papers and handed something to Mr. Rodgers. “He wanted to discuss that contract with you.”

“Okay, but you need to call the nanny and tell her that I’ll be home a bit later tonight…” Mr. Rodgers looked disappointed at the rescheduling of the meeting, Kate could imagine it was about his daughter. “Or wait, tell her to come by, and we’ll eat dinner here instead.”

“Will do Mr. Rodgers,” she said with a smile. 

“Oh, and from now on I want my appointments to not be made later than 5pm, unless it is an emergency, okay?” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head as he asked, looking at his assistant intently. 

“Absolutely! Was that all, Mr. Rodgers?”

“Yes, thank you.” When Francesca left the room she left a pressing silence between Kate and Mr. Rodgers. She was still sitting on the couch, facing his desk and the wall of windows, and he was sitting down at the edge of his desk, musing on something. 

“The bomb was in the cabinet storage?” Mr. Rodgers asked after a while.

“That’s correct.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, the wall that faces the storage is way over there,” he points to the other end of the room where she was sitting. “I don’t use those couches unless I have visitors, or during late nights… it’s not comfortable to write on them.”

“Are you saying that this means that the person responsible didn’t know the planning of this office, or your habits, or that they didn’t intend to actually kill you?” She asked, standing up and crossing her arms across her body. Mr. Rodgers shook his head.

“I was supposed to have a meeting this morning, with governor Bracken,” he said. “I would have been sitting on that couch, with him… I think it was meant for both of us.” 

“What were you meeting to discuss?” she asked.

“That’s confidential detective,” he said, but wore a teasing smile as he said it. “It sucks, doesn’t it?”  
“What must suck?”

“The confidential part of it, it must be really annoying to hear that,” he said. The smile on his face wasn’t wearing off. She hadn’t imagined him to smile this much, her idea of heads of corporations were men with balding heads and scowls on their faces. Mr. Rodgers looked as if he’d be much better suited for a life of a movie star. 

“Yes,” she said, stressing the end of the word, and then drawing in a deep breath. “Especially if it gets in the way of my investigation.”

“Well, I’ll cooperate as much as I can.” He walked away from the desk, and walked past her towards a small bar which was a part of the book case. “Whiskey, it’s past noon by now?”

“Ah no thank you, I’m on duty.” She held up her hands, but smiled tightly to show her gratitude.

“No, you’re not,” he said, but only poured himself a drink.

“Excuse me?”

“Captain Montgomery informed me that this is your day off, and I’m very grateful that you took the time to meet with me on your day off,” he said. Kate’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“He told you that?” She didn’t feel that it was necessary to point out that she hadn’t accepted to attend this meeting, she had been ordered here. There was a chance he would perceive that injection as a bit rude.

“Yup.” He said it with a pop on the p, then held up the whiskey towards her. “Sure you don’t want any?” 

“I’m sure.” He seemed to accept her declination this time, and sat down on the couch opposite the one she was standing by. Feeling awkward standing she mimicked him, sitting down as well 

“Do you have pictures of the bomb?” he asked after a few seconds of pregnant paus. She hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Yes, CSU took pictures of it.” She had learned that when you wanted someone to keep going the best was to not ask any questions yourself. During interrogation it provided a good base for questioning later on.

“Can I have copies?” He looked gleeful, excited, about the prospect of getting pictures. She furrowed her eyebrows, staring at him. She was confused. What could he possibly want with those pictures “A man like me getting a bomb threat isn’t that uncommon, but actually finding a bomb next to my office? That’s like a red badge of honor in my line of work.”

The pause that followed was due to Kate’s lack of ability to find a response that expressed her rage at how he treated the case, and at the same time remained professional, and respectful towards the victim of a crime. 

“Mr. Rodgers… two people have been murdered, I think you should be more concerned about finding the people responsible rather than a badge of honor.” It came out more angrily than she had intended, she had to take deep breaths to relax her jaw. When she looked back at Mr. Rodgers after looking down into her lap for a few seconds, he had a thoughtful look on his face.   
“You’d do great on my team,” he said. “You should come work for me.”

“No,” she said, fast to stop him before he went too far. That type of thinking for a man as powerful as he was did not bode well for her. 

“See, only one other person in my life says no to me, and she calls me dad, I need more people who say no to me.” She glared at him. 

“If I wanted to work for a corporation I would have done that, if I wanted to be someone’s body guard, I would have become that, if I wanted to be a baby sitter I would have married someone and become a stay at home mom. I’m not any of that, I’m a homicide detective.”

“As my baby sitter I’d be happy to let you spank me, if you wanted to,” he said, with a glimmer in his eyes that she wasn’t quite sure if he was flirting with her, teasing her, testing her, or what he meant with it. He was smug, she knew that. 

“Mr. Rodgers, I have places to be, so if you’ll excuse me.” As a woman in New York she was used to this type of behavior from men, but she wasn’t about to sit through it as a professional. 

“Detective Beckett, this is exactly why I need a person like you on my team,” he said.

“What, so you can ogle me as I work?” She couldn’t stop the disgusted huff that escaped her. The more time she spent with this man, the less control she had over her impulses. 

“No, because everyone else would’ve let that one slide.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m serious, people think I will smite them if they say no, it’s boring, and it’s disturbing.”

“I am not a baby sitter, Mr. Rodgers, I solve murders, and right now I’m trying to figure out who killed the Lake brothers so that they could kill you.”

“I think you’d find that there are much better resource if you work for me, than at the NYPD.” He smiled at her, again. What type of resources, she wondered, and if he had all of these resources then why hadn’t he solved this before it even happened? She squinted her eyes at him. He was probably a poker player, seemed to be a good one. There was no way to tell if he was bluffing or not. 

“Good bye, Mr. Rodgers,” she said, and quickly exited the room. She was too tired to deal with this, and him, at the moment.


	3. Wachen Hotel

**Monday August 31st 2009 – Wachen Hotel**

When she got back to her apartment it was already well past 1pm, and despite changing into comfortable clothes and laying down to rest on the couch, sleep was evading her. The thought of Mr. Rodgers struck a chord, one which when struck wouldn’t let her rest. He threaded the fine line of being an asshole, and someone who was actually intriguing. It bugged her that she didn’t immediately thwart his advances. It wasn’t the first time she experienced a man coming onto her like this, but usually she would dismiss them as horny pigs.

What was it about him, she wondered? He looked nice, he was attractive and he knew it. It wouldn’t be the first time she found an older man attractive, in fact in many of her relationships that had been a common thing. Sometimes it became an issue, like when she had just graduated from college and the man she was dating at the time was ready to settle down, which she far from ready to do at age 22 – the acceptance into the police academy was another point in the “not ready to settle down” column”. Those men had had one thing in common: they had been stoic, focused men. Rodgers didn’t fit that type. He had toys on his desk, and smiled too often. 

After tossing for a while on it she grumbled, glared at the ceiling, and sat up. Deciding to relax with a movie instead she shuffled through her DVD collection, trying to find a movie which didn’t require too much investment. Something she could watch and daze off while watching. She decided on a movie – one she would never admit to owning, nor liking; Hairspray. There was a certain image she wanted to project, one which didn’t involve Zach Effron. 

When she was suitably cuddled up on the couch with a cup of tea, a cozy blanket, and the remote, she pressed play. By the time she was half way through the movie she was close to dozing off when Rodgers face popped up in her head. Letting out a frustrated squeak she hid her face in her hands, shaking her head to how easily he managed to intrude her thoughts. 

Unable to stop herself she reached for her phone that was lying on the coffee table, she had put it on complete silent when she had decided to take a nap. There was one new message on the screen from Montgomery about a meeting set for the morning at the Wachen Hotel. Wachen was an upscale fancy hotel, where a one night stay could rival her monthly rent. There was no need for a guessing game as to whom she was there to meet with. 

Dropping her phone down on the couch she turned to focus on the movie again, but her interest in it had disappeared. It was irritating. After a whole week of no breakthroughs, where she had spent 9 to 5 shuffling papers, doing fruitless interviews, this happened when she was due for her day off. Right when they were about to start investigating into the juicy stuff, she was taking a break. It wasn’t just irritating, it was unfair. She should be out there, looking for the people responsible, talking to Ryan. Ryan was probably released from custody by now. 

Figuring she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the movie anymore she hit pause, and went to get her laptop instead. She googled Richard Rodgers once again, but this time not to get insight into the company Colin Lake had been working for, but to get insight into the man.

Born April 1st 1964, an only child to Jackson and Martha Rodgers, he stumbled into finance while he was in college. It wasn’t all accidental due to his father’s position in the finance sector, but that certainly wasn’t the sole cause for his luck. By the time he was 27 he was a millionaire, and at age 30 he had earned his first billion. There wasn’t much about his personal life written, she suspected it was meant to be that way. It mentioned two marriages, one to woman née Leslie Barker, and another one née Meredith Finley. Both of whom were elegant women with stunning red hair. It was obvious that Rodgers had a type.

There was no mention of a daughter other than that he had one. The first mention of this daughter was two years before, when his divorce to his second wife Meredith was announced. From that Kate gathered that his daughter must have been around three or four years old, and since Rodgers had mentioned a dancing recital she leaned towards four a bit more. All in all, Rodgers personal life was kept personal. There were announcements of engagements, but not of the weddings, save for the occasional pictures from events with small blurbs, the announcements were all that existed of him 

That left the purchase of the factory in Thailand. She typed in her search into google, to see if she could find any articles discussing the takeover. One business paper addressed the issue slightly in a short news article, addressing how unusual this was, and the strategy behind it. Kate wasn’t sure there was much of a strategy behind the purchasing, and selling, of the factory. From Rodgers’ expression at the time it appeared to be more of a spur of the moment decision, rather than a carefully executed plan. 

The top result when she searched for the company’s name now was the news of the bomb that had been found. Never one to indulge in reporters versions of events, she considered ignoring it. Glancing at the clock she realized that it was past five, and she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After ordering take-out she read through the article while waiting for the food to arrive. As she suspected the article didn’t give away any details they had missed. What was left was the comment section. Amidst the shocked reactions there were the predictable anti-corporation sentiments with the subsequent pro-side that argued with them. None of the comments targeted Castles specifically, there were just general comments.

The food arrived, and as she sat down by her dinner table she came to the conclusion that there was only one thing they truly did know. This wasn’t the work of a person who had sentiments against large corporations, but someone who was against Castles. Senator Bracken was the next person on their list to talk to. His political agenda, and the reason he and Roberts were meeting, could be the key to solving this case.

She knew exactly what she was going to start with come tomorrow morning. 

When the next day came, which it did with a feeling of ambivalence for Kate, she headed to the precinct to pick up some paperwork before heading to Wachen Hotel. After the bomb, and subsequent interviews, she was behind on work. Far behind. She suspected that she would spend most of the day at the hotel, lulling Mr. Rodgers into comfort – or more comfortable. Kate had never stepped her foot inside Wachen Hotel before, had no idea what the insides of the hotel looked like, but she had an idea from the type of people who stayed there. It was, from what she gathered, walking a fine line between modern and classic. 

When she got there she took much pride in that she was right in that assessment. It didn’t sport the crystal chandeliers, nor the golden décor, but didn’t over-do on the sleek open space cold design either. The décor was simple yet completely pretentious, no doubt about it. When she scanned the book cases that lined the walls of the lobby she found that most of the works were classics, most probably early editions by the frail looking dusty spines. In between those works were fillers, books which were published in the 20th century, and didn’t survive even the decade they had been published in. The receptionist had left her standing in the lobby to check a security list in the back room. Sloppy, she concluded, since she could just sneak up now if she wanted to. The security in this hotel wasn’t the best, she thought, until she noticed a man sitting at the corner of the room reading a newspaper.

Okay, she thought, not that sloppy. She looked around the lobby again, and out towards the entrance of the hotel. From her position she could see one more plain-clothed security personnel. There was a plan to this, of course. Mr. Rodgers was a high-up rich man with connections. The man probably never went anywhere without this type of security, but it was obviously not enough. She thought back to his offer of her working for him, with slight annoyance. How was she supposed to go from being a homicide detective to a guard standing outside a door? While it surely was an honorable job, it wasn’t the type of job she had worked this hard to do. Some desired it, but she did not. It wasn’t mall security, but it wasn’t senior detective. 

The receptionist returned with a smile on his face, confirming that she was on the list, and to head on up the elevator. The elevator was neither too fast, nor was it too slow, giving her one last moment to gather herself before meeting Mr. Rodgers again. It wasn’t usual for her – people rarely affected her enough to cause this kind of response. Having to gather herself? That wasn’t the per-usual, under any other circumstance she would have stepped inside without a second thought, or glance, at where in the room someone was. 

As she walked into the suite that Mr. Rodgers was staying in she could immediately sense where he was, which annoyed her even further. He stood by a large table which seated a group of people, immersed in a conversation which might as well have been Greek to her. It was not the lawyers she had met yesterday, only Rodgers’ assistant was familiar. The room she entered into was large, with large windows letting in light – the view was fantastic, she had to admit – a small sofa group, a dining table which they were sitting by, and tucked into a corner was a piano that looked more like a decoration than a functional piano. Behind the dining table was an arch way that lead into a kitchen area, which was set up more for eating breakfast and storing bought beverages and snacks, than to be used for cooking-purposes. 

“Detective Beckett!” Mr. Rodgers had spotted her by the door, and with grin he stepped towards her, waving a dismissive hand towards the group of people sitting at the table. They quieted down quickly, and seemed to pick up idle amongst themselves. 

“Mr. Rodgers,” she said with a smile of her own, trying not to be too enthusiastic in her response. 

“Please, I told you to call me Rick.” Her smile tightened, but she nodded, and repeated his name under her breath. “Now, you’re probably wondering why you’re here?”

“Yes, I do actually.” She had noted that Esposito wasn’t around, though given her seniority it wasn’t unexpected that he was not here. 

“I had a discussion with your Captain yesterday after you left, about the proposition I had for you, and we came to an agreement,” he said. The look on his face was disturbing to her, and she wondered just how Mr. Rodgers had managed to get his way in all of this. Did he bribe Montgomery?

“What type of agreement?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Well, it was a very giving discussion, and I must say I’m very impressed with your resume… graduating at the top of your class, highest closure rate, youngest woman in the NYPD to make senior detective… looks and brains are intriguing, especially when people like that appear in the most peculiar places…” He paused for a moment, regarding her with a look of admiration and puzzlement. “Obviously I cannot persuade you to come work for me, so Captain Montgomery and I hashed out an agreement where I, to put it in layman’s terms, borrow you for a while.”

“Borrow?” She asked incredulously. She was not a toy that could be handed off to another child for a couple of days.

“Bad choice of word,” he said. “I apologize, how does ‘Montgomery will hire you out for a while’ sound? Better?” She clenched her jaw and stared at him as a response. “I see, either way I believe that you would be an invaluable part of my team, and that you will find it giving to be here.”

“How would that be Mr. Rodgers?” He raised his brow at her usage of his surname, rather than the nickname he had requested she call him by. 

“As I mentioned yesterday I have resources at hand which the NYPD don’t have access to,” he said. She raised her eyebrows at him. “I have money, all the gadgets you need, and I don’t have to jump the political hurdles that the NYPD would need to be mindful of— “she cut him off.

“You don’t have the law, Mr. Rodgers,” she said, reminding him that while she could do a job here, it wasn’t the job she wanted to do.

“Ah, but you do have the law, and even if I hire you for a little while, you are still employed by the state of New York, and you still have your badge.” She considered him for a moment. He seemed genuine in his offer, believed at least that he could offer something more to this investigation. Admittedly, Esposito and she had struck out at several points during this investigation due to red tape, especially the non-disclosure agreement Castles’ lawyers had made the employees sign. 

There were benefits to agreeing, that much she couldn’t deny. This would be temporary, and once they had solved this case she would go back to the precinct and her normal duty. Yet, the question that needed to be posed was if the killer, and attempted assassin, wasn’t caught, at what point would she be given the clear to go back to duty?

“How long would I be working for you, exactly?” Mr. Rodgers regarded her with an expression she couldn’t quite place, somewhere between amused and weary. Was he scared of her reaction, she wondered?

“Well, right now Captain Montgomery and I have come to the agreement of two months, or until the person, or persons, responsible is in custody. If they still have not been caught at the end of these two months we’ll revisit the agreement, maybe you’ll then continue to be here full time, or part time, or the cooperation between the NYPD and Castles will be… ended.” 

“Two months?” she said, incredulously, eyebrows shot up high in her forehead. 

“By two months I suspect the trails would’ve gone cold already,” he said, as if it explained everything perfectly.

“The longest I’ve worked fulltime on a case before this has been a bit over two weeks, and that was a highly unusual investigation.” Mr. Rodgers appeared as if he was mulling what she said over as he walked away from her, and towards the window near the corner where the piano was. 

“The bomb was not just a threat to me, but to several other people in the vicinity, it’s not a matter of personal safety Detective Beckett, it’s a matter of security.” The usual goofiness that seemed to be synonymous with Mr. Rodgers had been replaced, now his face was still, serious. She felt guilt jab her in her stomach, and she didn’t like it.

“Point is, Mr. Rodgers, that you are given a privilege here that most people don’t get, and I want you to know that.” Special favors for people wasn’t a thing she liked doing. Procedure was equal, no matter the status of the victim. That Mr. Rodgers could buy himself special treatment irked her, it went against everything she believed. 

“I know that,” he said. “Can you play?” The seriousness was slowly fading off of his face.

“Play what?” She furrowed her eyebrows, then her eyes landed at the piano. “I used to be able to play ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’…” Mr. Rodgers made a gesture towards the piano. “I can’t anymore –besides I have work to do.”

“Work,” Mr. Rodgers said, and looked at the pile of files she was still holding in her grasp. It wasn’t a big pile, but a pile nonetheless. “I’ve set up a space for you over here, it’s in the entertainment room, but I figured you’d rather work in there than in your room –“ 

“My room?” she asked. 

“You will be staying with me?” He did a double take back at her, but kept walking through the doorway into a medium sized room with an entertainment center as the main focus of the room. A desk stood against the back of a plush couch – far too inviting for Kate’s tastes – and its grey surfaces didn’t match the warm colors of the room. “I had them send up this for you.”

“I will be staying with you?” she asked.

“As a part of my team it’s important that you are close by, and as the head of it you will have a room here… don’t worry, they’re at opposite ends of this apartment.” His eyes twinkled as she smiled.

“I haven’t brought anything…” At this point she had realized how futile it would be to object, and she hated to admit it to herself, but she looked forward to being some place that wasn’t her apartment for a while. This place looked luxurious, and while the job wasn’t exactly what she considered ideal, the living space was at least close to it. 

“I’ll give you enough time off to let you grab some things later today,” he said, and then winked at her. “But right now I need to get back to work, so I’ll show you were Kevin is, and then the two can find a way to cooperate on this… after that you’ll need to meet my lawyer to sign a few things.”

“If I refuse to sign ‘a few things’, what happens then?” Mr. Rodgers grinned at her question.

“That you’ll have to ask your Captain.” She decided it was better not to ask her Captain. 

“Do you mean Kevin as in the Kevin Ryan we arrested as a suspect in this investigation?” 

“Yes, the one you falsely accused of having a role in this,” he said. She rolled her eyes at this, before realizing what she was doing, and focused her eyes on the ground instead. “I personally vetted him, he and his girlfriend are a part of my family.”

“Your judgment may be clouded, Mr. Rodgers, but I will respect your decision unless I have evidence of the contrary.” Middle ground, she told herself, if these two months were going to be pleasant, or at least close to pleasant, she would need to find the middle grounds. Hopefully Mr. Rodgers would find it in him to do the same.


	4. Little Rodgers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay! I will have the next chapter up in a few days, and then after that there will be a few months of haitus as I continue to write on this story. I'm going to try to have it finished before I start publishing again to give a consistent schedule along with a story with less continuity problems... Hope you enjoy this, now we're going to get to meet Alexis!

**Chapter 4 – Little Rodgers**

_Monday August 31st 2009_

Ryan and Kate had spent the day looking over details over how they would go about the task of keeping surveillance over Mr. Rodgers. It had proven to be a more intricate job than she had imagined, but she had been pleased when her knowledge had been fruitful to the planning. Ryan hadn’t commented anything on the interrogations that had taken place the days before, and Kate followed the same route, save for the reassurance that she had been cleared to work together with him. 

By lunch time her stomach was loudly protesting the lack of food, and Ryan gave her an apologetic look.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve thought about food before,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and starting some app on it before handing her the phone. “Here’s the menu from the Thai place down the street, they give us discount… but if you don’t like Thai we can eat something else!”

“No, I like Thai food,” she said, reassuring him with a smile as she scrolled down the menu. “I’ll have pad thai, that’s always a safe bet.” She handed him his phone back. 

“Great, I’ll go out and check if anyone else wants any, and call an order to them.” He walked out of the room leaving her alone with the documents they had been pouring over for the past hours. A quick glance around the room confirmed that she wouldn’t find anything that actually interested her in there. 

Taking her own phone out of her pocked she noticed a missed call from Lanie. Ever since the murder of Colin Lake she had been trying to figure out the bullet that they had found in his chest, but had gotten nowhere. The FBI and the CIA had never heard of the type of bullet used, and there was nothing in the data bases that came close to describing it.

Glancing back at the door she gauged that she had about a few minutes until Ryan would return, and hit the dial button for Lanie. 

“About time you returned my call,” Lanie said when she answered, and Kate was thankful that her eye rolling wasn’t visible over the phone.

“Do you have any news on the case?” she asked, leaning back in the chair, leaning against the armrest. 

“No, no news, still have no clue of the bullet, but I did find something on both Colin and Ethan, and I’m waiting for the results on that,” Lanie said. “Got a couple of other murders that I’ve had to look at, so to be honest it will be a slow progress from here.”

“Okay, but if you don’t have any news why the call?” When Lanie let out an offended huff Kate knew that she could have been a little more tactful, and regretted how she had asked instantly.

“Well, yesterday you met with a very single billionaire,” Lanie said, her eye roll wasn’t hidden by being at the other end of a phone: it was audible in her voice.

“He’s 15 years older than me, and he’s got a kid,” Kate said, self-consciously glancing at the door to make sure that Ryan wasn’t about to step in and overhear this conversation with her friend.

“Raglan was closer to 20 years older than you, and you were a lot younger then,” Lanie said, not at all convinced by Kate’s dismissal. 

“Why did I tell you about that?” Kate dragged a hand through her hair, but her short hair made it harder. She had started to regret cutting it now – it was becoming longer and reaching a length which was becoming much less flattering. 

“Because you wanted to convince me you weren’t a nun.” Lanie was close to laughing, Kate could hear it in the way her voice was shaking. “And then you went out with Sorenson.” 

“Right.”

“But Kate, you’ve got to tell me about Richard, I’ve seen pictures of him and he looks like a great kisser,” Lanie said, followed by a faint sigh. 

“He does?” She tried to ask nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t noticed the way his lips puckered slightly when he was trying to hide a smile. “It doesn’t matter anyway, he’s like a twelve year old on a sugar rush.”

“Mhm, sure honey.” Just then Ryan entered the room again wearing a smile and saying that the food would arrive within the next thirty minutes.

“I got to go now, I’ll talk to you later?” She sat up straighter in the chair again, conscious of the presence of someone she was barely acquainted with. 

“Yes, and then you better give me a better description of that Rodgers guy!” She promised Lanie that she would, and then she was allowed to hang up the phone and return to Ryan whom was waiting with a patient look on his face. 

“He has that effect on people,” he said after a few moments of silence, casually flipping through papers that was laid out on the table. 

“Who?” She furrowed his eyebrows at him, and he smiled back at her with an amused expression.

“Rick,” he elaborated, and when he saw her open her mouth to protest he spoke again. “If it makes you feel any better it looks like the feeling is mutual.” She sunk back down in the chair and regarded the blond Irish man thoughtfully for a while. Mr. Rodgers being attracted to her wasn’t news to her, she had noticed it fairly quickly, yet she hadn’t thought it was as obvious that she thought he was attractive, especially since she hadn’t given it much of a consideration. There was no denying the fact that his smile did cause some knee quivers, and the confidence in the way he walked was appealing to her. He was charming in the same way he was annoying, and that left her feeling as if she was being stretched between hating him and wanting to bone him. In sum: she was confused about it. 

Following lunch with Ryan she had a meeting with the lawyers of Castles wherein the lawyers appeared to have been sucked dry to the bone. Ten years earlier her aspiration had been to become a lawyer, one more in line with what her mother and father did, and she suspected that when the people in the room had chosen to pursue law neither of them had expected to become zombies talking in monotone voices. Corporate law seemed to be where most ended up, working in teams of lawyers with glassy eyes and dreams crushed by their pursuit to satisfy corporate greed. While Kate would have chosen another path had her mother not been killed, this path was the right one she concluded easily after the meeting had ended. 

As the meeting ended it was nearing the end of a workday, and she was given time to go back to her apartment to get her things before the evening rush started. While packing her clothes up she took the time to phone Montgomery to express her displeasure with the turn of events, especially since she was informed by Mr. Rodgers and not her Captain. It wasn’t unexpected that Montgomery would not have her complaint, and after being informed that this cooperation between the NYPD and Castles wasn’t initiated only by the corporation, but also by the mayor she apologized and informed him she would stay in touch. Castles was apparently a major investor in the city and its cultural development projects, which meant the mayor was a supporter of the CEO of Castles. 

Her bag was most definitely too light for a two months stay at a hotel, yet she had only had about two hours to pack before heading back to Wachen. It was only about twenty minutes from her own apartment, if traffic was light, meaning that it would not be too difficult to head back from time to time to grab fresh sets of clothes. She hadn’t managed to finish packing before work let out for the day, meaning that she ended up in the dense evening traffic queues that crept along the streets. By the time she had made it back to the hotel it was nearing six.

When she entered the apartment she was hit by the scent of pancakes. Perplexed by the choice of dinner she rolled her suitcase behind her as she walked towards the kitchen. Mr. Rodgers was standing by the counter and had set up something that looked like a hotplate, and was smearing pancake batter across it. It dawned on her then that he was making crepes, not pancakes. 

“Oh, you’re back just in time, Alexis and I are making dinner,” he said with a proud smile. “Or, I am making dinner and you’re just eating it all up.” He looked across the counter with a mock-stern expression on his face, and she followed his gaze to a small girl who was sitting perched on the bar stool. Alexis giggled loudly in response, showing a missing front tooth. The girl was older than Kate had expected her to be, instead of around three years old she was four, or possibly even older than that. Her hair was a vibrant red color, one which was rarely a natural hair color, and her skin was quite possibly the smoothest porcelain Kate had ever seen. 

“Hi miss Beckett,” the girl said with a large smile and a lisp. “I’m Alexis Harper Rodgers, and I am four and a half years old.” The girl held out her hand for Kate to shake, and she took it in a soft grasp and shook it slightly.

“Hello Alexis,” she replied, smiling down at her. “It’s nice to meet you. You can call me Kate if you want to.” The girl smiled brightly at her. 

“My dad told me that you’re a police detective,” she said, stumbling a bit over the word detective.

“That’s right, I am.” The girl nodded her head, accepting the reply.

“Like Derrick dad!” she said, eyes widening as she practically started bouncing on her chair. Kate looked at Mr. Rodgers with furrowed eyebrows.

“Sit still Alexis, you’ll fall off,” Mr. Rodgers scolded, pointing the spatula at the child who was trying to contain her excitement.

“Who is Derrick?” Kate asked, she didn’t recall having come across that name when she reviewed the list of security employees at Castles. 

“The man in my dad’s books, he catches bad guys that do bad things,” Alexis said, and then accepted a crepe on her plate as her dad held it out to her. 

“Do you want ham and cheese, or ham and butter?” he asked his daughter.

“Cheese!” Kate watched skeptically as he put some grated cheese on the crepe and then a piece of ham. Alexis folded it expertly and started eating without a comment. 

“Ham and cheese on a pancake?” she asked, not quite sure how to react. While she saw herself as a bit more worldly than the average person she had never been to France, and to her pancakes was breakfast food, and it was not eaten with ham and cheese. 

“It’s crepe! She wouldn’t have goats cheese, so regular cheese will have to do, do you like goats cheese?” he asked her, plating up another crepe on a plate and handed it to her. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a savory crepe before,” she said. The child seemed to enjoy it, but she’d seen children eat cucumber with ketchup, so she wasn’t all that convinced that a child’s tastes were any indicator of how good it would taste to her. “But uh, yeah I do.”

He handed her the cheese and then pushed a platter with different vegetables and cold cuts lying on it. She assembled her food while watching to Mr. Rodgers talk to Alexis. The girl had some similarities to her father, but she must've inherited most of it from her mother. Mr. Rodgers teased the girl as he made Kate another crepe, making faces and telling jokes as the girl almost fell off the chair laughing.

It was a new perspective to the man who had only seemed to be interested in attention from women before. As he picked the girl up from her chair after dinner – announcing to Kate that Alexis was going to have her evening bath, and he would clean up after dinner afterwards – while the girl was keening from laughter at how silly her dad was acting, Kate felt a strange pang in her chest at the sight. It was as if her heart expanded at an alarming rate, and the smile which had been annoying before was now one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen.

It was love. She knew that it was the love towards his daughter that made him smile like it, and it was exactly the sort of love she remembered shining in her mother's face when she was alive. That thought caused her own smile to drop – she hadn't noticed that she'd been smiling until then. She wondered what her mother would've made of a man like Mr. Rodgers, wondered what she would see in him that she herself didn't notice.

What she had was the next best thing: a friend with a massive interest in the happiness of her friend. She vowed herself to call her later. There was no way she would reveal just how attracted she felt to the man as he had carried his daughter to take a bath. An admission would open a can of worms, and her friend would be relentlessly pushing her towards acting on her feelings of attraction. Lanie thought that she kept herself holed up, and that she needed to go out and do the female equivalent of sowing your oats.

While she waited for Mr. Rodgers to finish giving Alexis a bath, as she still had no clue where she would be sleeping during the stay at the hotel, she picked up her tablet and the book she was currently reading on it. While most people in her profession took a break from their job completely when they went off work she couldn't keep her curiosity sated enough to do so. That was the reason why a large portion of her book shelves were dedicated to crime novels of various kinds. At the moment she was reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium series

Deeply immersed in the books she didn't notice the time passing, so that when she felt a hand on her shoulder she swung around and was about to punch Mr. Rodgers before she stopped herself.

"You can't do that!" she said. "You can't just sneak up on a police officer."

"I tried calling your name," he said with a smile. "I love that book by the way." Kate looked down at the tablet and hurriedly put it in the pocket of her bag before he noticed anything else. "I thought you'd have already gone to bed by now."

"I don't know where my bed is," she said, and Mr. Rodgers' mouth opened in realization.

"Oh sorry, let me show you." Kate picked up her bags and followed him towards where he had taken Alexis before. "Alexis sleeps with me, and you sleep in here." He pointed at a set of doors which was side by side to another door – she suspected that lead to his room.

"She seems like a sweet kid," she said. His face was lit up by a small serene smile.

"She's the best one." She simply nodded in reply. "Thank you for today, I think we'll see a bit more of each other tomorrow."

"Good night Mr. Rodgers," she said, holding out her hand for him to shake. He took it and held her hand for far longer than what would be usually seen as appropriate.

"Until tomorrow Detective Beckett," he said, and then released her hand.

What a peculiar thing to say, she thought, but didn't comment on it. Instead she opened the door to her room, and picked up her phone to call Lanie. She needed advice, and Lanie was always prepared to give it.


	5. 1998

The bed felt strange. For a moment Kate stopped and felt the surroundings before opening her eyes. While she had followed someone home after a night out before it had been a few years since the last time that happened – and that was all thanks to Lanie, and she did not feel as if her head was splitting open, nor did she feel as if she could swallow an ocean. Thus, she concluded, she was not about to experience the awkward morning after, she was about to experience an awkward morning with her – temporary – employer. 

Glancing at the clock on her phone she saw that it was just barely past 5am, and the sky was starting to grow lighter in preparation for sunrise. Her alarm clock wasn’t due to go off for another two hours, which was a definite perk about living at work. There was no obvious reason to why she had woken up, and she was about to chalk it up to being unused to her surroundings when she heard talking through the walls to Mr. Rodgers’ bedroom. She did not have children herself, but she had heard stories from those who did that children tended to wake up much too early for their parents’ likings. 

Still feeling her body aching for sleep she turned over in bed, tucking the covers under her chin with the intention of doing just that. There were two things that stopped her; one it was her parched lips and throat, and two; the low murmuring coming from the other side of the wall. It reminded her of her own father who would read to her at night in the same murmuring tone. When she was Alexis’ age it was the tone which would lull her to sleep, but now it was keeping her on high alert. There was something about fathers that pulled on her heart strings, something which made them that much more attractive. 

Being attracted to Mr. Rodgers was not a feeling she was intending to entertain.

Realizing that sleep would continue to evade her unless she did something to quench her thirst. She was not about to do anything with Mr. Rodgers, so the option that was left was to take a drink of water. Her late night inspection of the bathroom which was joined with her room had revealed no glass, and had then decided that grabbing a glass from the kitchen wasn’t that important, which was a decision she now regretted. 

The living room and kitchen was dimly lit by the lights of the city, and the sky which was slowly becoming illuminated by the impending sunrise. She had never liked the period just before dawn in summer, the green hued light felt sinister to her, as if it wasn’t intended to be seen by human eyes. 

She twisted the tap slowly, wincing at how loud the water was as it hit the bottom of the sink. After filling her glass she leaned back against the counter, regarding the kitchen with the eyes of a detective. Mr. Rodgers must have cleaned up after them, just as he had said he would. The appliances he had used were hidden in some cupboard, as had everything else. Despite being rich Mr. Rodgers was not a man who was constantly catered to – he knew how to tidy up. There were no traces of spilt batter, and it all looked clean. As if no one had used the kitchen. 

That was when she first noticed the toy box standing next to the piano. It was filled to the brim with various toys and stuffed animals. There was a doll, a tractor, and odd pieces of building blocks. She smiled softly at the sight, leaning forward to inspect it further, when she saw a shadow move. Acutely aware of the fact that she had left her gun in the bedside drawer in the room she knew she was vulnerable, as was Mr. Rodgers and his daughter. The kitchen counter was void of anything that could be improvised as a weapon. 

Inching forward she looked towards where she thought she saw the shadow and braced herself – Mr. Rodgers emerged from the small hallway from where their rooms were. She released a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, and Mr. Rodgers looked at her with eyebrows high up in his forehead.

“Good morning detective,” he said, his voice low with a trace of sleep still left in it. Images flashed in Kate’s head. There were images which she should not have. Images of Mr. Rodgers next to her in bed talking to her with that voice. She cleared her throat. She was glad she had remembered to pack her flannel pajama pants, and didn’t sleep in her t-shirt and underwear as she usually did. 

“Good morning Mr. Rodgers.” She smiled at him, bringing her glass up in a salute. 

“You’re up early, I’m guessing Alexis woke you up?” He gave her a sympathetic look as he walked towards her, taking a glass out of the cupboard beside her, and filling it up with water. 

“I’m a light sleeper, it’s a cop thing.” She shrugged.

“I managed to get her to fall back asleep, otherwise she would have been really cranky by four, and impossible to keep awake past 6… and then I’d have the honor of being woken even earlier tomorrow.” She would have thought a topic like that would have a parent look exasperated, but Mr. Rodgers was serene, his face shining from the miniscule smile that crooked his lips just slightly. 

“Must be a handful.” He shrugged that time, and looked over at her.

“You need to thank your husband for enduring me taking you away from him for so long, I should have said that sooner, but I guess it slipped my mind.” He looked embarrassed, with color rising on his cheeks. She furrowed her eyebrows and cocked her head at him.

“I’m not married.” She wasn’t sure if he was playing a game with her or not. 

“If so the person I hire to investigate employees has done a very poor job, he said you’ve been married since fall 98, I remembered because I was surprised that you had married so young, and you didn’t take his name.” Oh no, she thought. She twisted her body to face him, and put her glass down so that he would not see that her hands were shaking. 

“Do you remember the name?” Her voice was too steady, too flat. There was no emotion, only tension which she was trying her best to cover up, but the melody was off. She hoped he didn’t notice, but there was a flicker in his eyes that told her that he was onto her. 

“I remember the last name… O’Leary.” Air left her lungs in a sudden rush, and she had to brace herself against the counter to steady her legs. 

“Rogan O’Leary?” Mr. Rodgers nodded after a slight pause – he did look a bit worried, but she couldn’t focus on that for long. “Wow.”

“You didn’t know?” he asked, and she only shook her head as a reply. “Well this sure is an interesting way to find out then…”

“Yes,” she said, and looked at him with a sudden clarity, and then down at herself and the state of undress she was in. Whilst she was wearing a long-sleeved sleep shirt and a bit too long formless flannel pants it was still not the appropriate thing to wear in front of your boss. “Can we forget this?” He cocked his head, perplexed by the sudden change of tone, from distant to businesslike. 

“Sure.” He took a sip of water as he looked at her walk out of the kitchen. “Beckett,” he called out, and she turned around to face him again, “just so you know… I’ve been married two times, I’m not going to be passing any judgments.”  
“Thanks… Richard.” She smiled gratefully at him, and then returned to her bedroom, and this time with a glass of water in her hand. 

It had never occurred to her that she was married to Rogan O’Leary, and at the time and up until this morning she had believed it to be a joke. There had been times she had thanked her lucky stars that it had been a joke, but now she felt as if it was a prank the universe had pulled on her. It had taken her nearly 11 years to figure it out. It had been a few days in Vegas with fake IDs. Rogan had just turned 21, and the two of them thought it would be hilarious to visit a chapel. The photos that had been taken had been saved despite the less then amicable break-up that followed a few weeks later just before she returned to New York for Thanksgiving, and they were saved in a box under her bed. They were embarrassing photos, but photos that had sentimental value. It was the last of her carefree and rebellious years. 3 months later her mother had been murdered, and her life grinded to a halt. 

Stanford was a distant memory to her. She tried to return after her mother’s death, but with her father succumbing to his alcoholism she transferred as soon as she could to NYU. Stanford was a dream, an almost, which at times lured at the back of her head like a prey, waiting for a weak moment to pounce and poison her with regret. She had wanted to be a lawyer, the first female Chief Justice had been the ultimate goal. Yet she was okay with her life as it was, it fulfilled her in ways she wasn’t sure that being a lawyer would have, but the frustrating thing was to not know what could have been. She knew she probably would have been happier, less sharp around the edges. 

She glanced at the clock on her phone but didn’t register the time. She was too lost in thought about the person she could have been, and if that was a person who was in anyway similar to who she is now. She shook her head to rid herself of the thoughts. They were dangerous thoughts which threatened to pull her in and under unless she started to fight back against the current now. 

The best way to fight against it was to dive into work, solve a case. Since she was now under the employ of Richard Rodgers she would have to find a way to distract herself in it. Before she had been intercepted by Rodgers’ plan to hire her for two months she had been planning on bringing in Bracken for questioning, but now she wasn’t even sure that senator Bracken was still in New York City. 

Deciding to take a shower and prepare herself for the day before calling senator Bracken’s office she once again glanced at her phone and gauged that she had about an hour before she would be able to reach anyone. 

An hour and a half later she was seated on the couch in the room with the piano – she hadn’t felt comfortable walking into the media room where Rodgers had put up a desk for her, it didn’t feel right. She had already called Bracken’s office and been informed that he was still in New York, but would be leaving for D.C later that day, so she was booked in for a short meeting in two hours when he was due to return after having dealt with private matters at an unknown location according to the receptionist. 

In the meantime she googled Bracken. William H Bracken was first a lawyer, like many politicians, and was Assistant District Attorney in the early 80s. Most of his profile was generic for a politician, with buzzwords thrown into the mix. He was committed to ending political and corporate corruption in the US, had strong family values, and believed in a stricter foreign policy in order to bring democracy into all corners of the world. From the looks of it senator Bracken appeared to be the average Joe politician, but why did a politician with an anti-corruption agenda have a meeting with the CEO of one of the most powerful corporations, and one of the most powerful people, in the world? Rodgers must be hiding something from her, and she wasn’t sure why he was after the access he had given her, and how intent he had been on finding out who was guilty. 

Was the bomb actually intended for Rodgers, or was it intended for senator Bracken? The third alternative was also very likely: the bomb was intended for the two of them. Was Rodgers and Bracken linked together? Was she about to uncover not just a plot to kill Richard Rodgers, and not just senator Bracken as well, but also corruption in which two very powerful men were the driving force against?

She looked up from her computer and across the room where Rodgers leaned down to kiss his daughter’s cheek as a goodbye. Alexis grabbed her nanny’s hand and the two walked out of the door to her pre-school. Rodgers caught her looking at them then, and gave her a glimmering smile which she forced herself to reciprocate.

How deep in had she gotten?


End file.
